My first speculation was the shipment of a cargo of Danvers onions to Liverpool in consignment of Baring Brothers. I was eager to have my first venture turn out a success. The onions were packed carefully in barrels, and I saw myself that they were in the best condition before they were shipped. I felt as if I had taken every precaution, and that I was assured of a pretty good thing. Then came the news from England: "Onions arrived; not in good order. Debit, £3 17s. 6d." That was the disappointing result of my first venture. I was a loser. Years afterward, when I was launching shipping lines between Australia and America, I cited this little experience of mine as an example of what might be expected by many who sent cargoes to the other end of the world. My second venture proved more successful. This was the shipping of fish on ice to New Orleans. It paid me well. But my real career as a shipper started in quite another and different way. I am ashamed to confess how I began this career, which made me a shipper of cargoes to the other end of the earth. But as I was too ignorant at the time to know much better, or, indeed, to give any thought at all to the matter, I shall, in the interest of truth, make a full confession. I became a smuggler of opium into China! It happened in this way. One of our captains, who was about to start with a cargo for the Orient, asked me if I did not want to send over something for sale, as he thought a good profit might be made on a shipment of something in demand there. "What would be a good thing to send?" I asked. "Opium," said he laconically. Opium meant nothing to me then. I had never thought of it in any way other than as a marketable product and an object in cargoes. So I went to Henshaw's, in Boston, and got three tins of opium, the best he had. This I placed in charge of the captain, and he smuggled it into China, and got a good price for it, to the profit of himself and me. But the smuggling did not end there. I had instructed him to lay in a supply of curios, silks, and other oriental things, and bring them to Boston. This part of the venture was as successful as the first, and I made quite a snug little sum. It was my first considerable profit. That was in '46-'47. I do not think any one in good standing in business has an idea now of cheating the Government out of tariff duties. I had not, at that time, the slightest idea that I was doing wrong. I felt entirely innocent of defrauding two governments, and did not realize that I was a smuggler. The wrong of the transaction I fully understood afterward.